Leaving La Paz: April 26, 2023

 

Leaving La Paz: April 26

We left La Paz somewhat on the spur of the moment; i.e., we knew we were going to leave sometime this week but Tom didn’t have work meetings until later and we decided to go at first light.  We had to get to Loreto by May 9^th – which is relatively easy as it’s only 115 miles – but we wanted to explore and see new sites along the way. 

Leaving La Paz, we had to get fuel (which is really the only reason we had to stop in La Paz in the first place, although we enjoy La Paz and have spent several weeks there in the past).  Getting fuel was a bit of a shit show – at least for us being new cruisers.  The wind was blowing our boat hard toward the dock- I thought we were going to bang hard into the dock & damage our boat or crush our hands – but we got our bumpers placed just in time and in a good enough spot. The fuel dock workers were helpful too.  One more high stress moment during our newbie first year of boating but the lesson learned was try not to get fuel or dock anywhere when it’s that windy.  Seems obvious but we should/could have planned better.  After spending $488, our diesel tanks were full.

Fuel Dock at Costa Baja in La Paz; it was super choppy and windy.

A side bar on the locals that work on docks or in a marina.   Generally, they are very helpful and nice (La Cruz Marina staff were the nicest so far).  Some though are less patient than others and I’ve been yelled twice because I didn’t know what the F they were saying – my fault for sure for not knowing Spanish but being yelled at is no bueno. 😑

La Paz is a busy port with tankers, cargo ships, and a car/passenger ferry from Mazatlán.  Even though the mouth into the La Paz Bay looks wide, the navigable channel is quite narrow with several sharp turns you have to make.  Fortunately, the channel is well marked with green and red buoys, so you know where to go.

Boating Route through the La Paz Channel

 As we were leaving La Paz, there were at least 3 cargo ships that were coming in.  We needed to head north/to port but didn’t want to turn in front of the cargo ships for obvious reasons.  Unexpectedly, one of the cargo ships called our boat name on the radio – which was super cool because they identified our boat using our new Cortex AIS transceiver (one of our new safety devices we recently bought).   They told us they were turning in front of us, so we adjusted our direction to avoid a collision and was actually the way we wanted to go.  If they did not contact us, we would not have collided with them – if we did, then we definitely  shouldn’t be boating – but since they contacted us, we were able to adjust our course in the direction we wanted to go  with less second guessing about what they were doing.  No other boat has called us via the AIS since then but at night, in the low visibility, or in busy areas, this is exactly the reason an AIS transceiver is helpful.

Freighter that called our boat name over the radio after ID'ing us via our new AIS

Display on our AIS that shows us other boats in the area;
information includes boat name, size, speed, direction, etc.